Green bin, to pay or not to pay?

The alternative for me would be trips to the tip which is on the way to where I work but for convenience sake I will probably keep the green bin and pay. I certainly won’t use it in the winter which makes it about £3 every time it’s emptied I think a lot of people won’t bother, garden waste will be hidden away in with normal refuse and the local tip will be swamped ( they have a small area for garden waste) I know I should compost but my garden is small and I find the bins unsightly plus my gardening time is limited and I prefer to spend it doing other things. Maybe when I retire?

 

Our council charge £70 now, it was 63, so we cancelled the bin. I tried to compost everything last year and it worked so well that I can take some of our neghbours greenwaste as well. We do have a few friends with the bins that we could put pieces into but in reality there is very little I can't use in the garden. If I have weeds then they go into a bucket of water to rot down and pour back onto the compost heap. If I have thick wood it goes in the deadhedge or down the allotment, the same goes for spike things like pyracantha, although I do use it to defend bird nesting areas.

 

I compost mine so i've never had one so don't know the price, neighbours had it for one year but now they don't as the lorry would have to make a special trip to collect it so i don't know how stop it neighbours or council
As the council tax is rising again and i only put out rubbish, one bag a year i may strat to but it out every 2 weeks just for the hell of it and get my moneys worth, recycling gets put out every 2 months so that may go to every 2 weeks again just for moneys worth and i will be reporting all the fly tipping in our area as well again for my moneys worth

 

I don't do any composting. All garden waste including grass goes into the green bin. 2 weekly collections are generally enough to handle what needs to go. Before anybody says I should be making compost, there are reasons I won't go into for why I don't.

 

I make compost but my kitchen waste and scrap paper/cardboard are enough to keep my bin filled up. I might fit in a few grass mowings in the summer.

 

Can be a bit debateable...........this is the first property where I have had a Green Waste only Bin which is now costing around £70 pa. As I haven't been able to fill it for the last 2 coollection dates, I'm losing out.
I'll probably need it next time so cautious about cancelling it.
All raw kitchen waste goes in my compost/raisd beds but that is included in the general recycling collections so I pay for that bit I don't use along with the general rubbish which I don't fill either. No easy way - everything except the Green waste is included in the Council tax so can't really pick and choose.

 

We have a ‘free’ collection but a) it’s only every 3 weeks for 8 months of the year, and b) the council tax is hefty imo.

I suppose would pay for collection if it came to it, as a tip-run is a bit of a hassle and would cost a few quid in petrol.

I’m trying to be more organised with composting this year, in part due to the fact that I more than fill a bin every 3 weeks.

 

I pay £58 to tewk bc for my brown bin and I don’t begrudge it because:
1 most people have one here and if they didn’t we’d have garden bonfires everywhere
2 it gets recycled and sold for compost
3 it is a good reliable service fortnightly and allows me to easily dispose of larger waste that I don’t compost myself

 

I'm in Gloucester and don't mind paying. What I am not happy about is stopping collections throughout December and January. Previously it was only the collection between Christmas and New Year missed. Due to how collection dates have fallen, we actually missed nearly 3 months of collection. Last collection was 17/18 November and first of the New Year was around the 12/13th Feb.

 

We have to start paying for our green waste bin from this year but we only get collections between end of March and end of October. £40 for the year. As we are not too far away from the local recycling centre it’s not a problem for us to go there when necessary. Having said that, we are still waiting for our new bin to delivered and have found out lately that the recycling centre is closing down ! We don’t yet know where the new one will be sited….sod’s law, it will be miles away.
Although our garden is only small. we do make good use of the fortnightly collections for green waste….I don’t know where it comes from!

 

Our problem at the moment is we cancelled our bin last year and the council won't come and pick it up. They are always apologetic but it still never gets taken back. We don't want it and were told if it got stolen or broken, it was up to us to pay for a new one. It is well over a decade old and won't be going to a new home other than the tip. I would take it down the allotment to use as a compost bin but I think they want to make sure we don't sneakily use it without paying for it.

 

I think it's a bit like old vigin TV boxes they always say you have to send them back but they are useless to them so don't really want them, same happens with driving licences.
From July my council is providing sticky labels to put on your bin stating you have paid.
Now watch the bins start disappearing.

 

Where my sister lives they are given stickers to put on the green waste bins that they've paid for. Bins without the right stickers don't get emptied. As far as I know there isn't a problem with bins being stolen.

 

We used to have that system, you had a new sticker every year and they tended to fade, tear or come off. Now it's all digital - the crew know on each collection round which houses are subscribed. So stealing a bin wouldn't work, it would never get emptied until you paid up.